Call Quality

Callers were not impressed with the ATIV S Neo, saying that call quality was acceptable but not great. They described us as nasally, hollow and with somewhat of an echo. They rated us a 7/10 and said it was in the lower echelon of devices we’ve tested. The news was a bit better on our end, with natural voice reproduction and good volume.

Battery

The ATIV S Neo employs a 2000mAh battery, which Samsung claims delivers 15 hours of talk time and nearly 11 days of standby. Off course screen-on time pays a large role in this, so if you are watching a lot of videos or browsing the web for hours at a time that number will go down significantly. Still, these are very good numbers for a smartphone and will get most all users through the day without any need to top off.

Conclusion

With all Windows Phones running nearly identical software and Microsoft employing strict hardware minimums it can be challenging for manufacturers to differentiate their products. Nokia has already chosen to focus on the camera, and HTC is producing their typical top-notch hardware. Samsung’s Android approach has been to include an excess of niche software customizations, but with the less open Windows Phone platform they are not able to do this. They seem to be struggling to find their niche, and instead are just trying to impart the Galaxy S design and hope familiarity will lure customers. Unfortunately, the phone’s good but not great performance makes it poor choice for Windows Phone customers, and makes it especially hard to justify the switch from another smartphone ecosystem.

Seriously guys, how about reviewing a smartphone based on how well it performs instead of your own ridiculous bias against an operating system ???
PA rated this phone a 6.5, which leaves me bewildered if you consider that it's the same score awarded to the galaxy pocket neo - a feature phone with a 3" qvga (320x240; 133 ppi ; 256K colour) , 832mhz single core processor , 2mp rear camera (no ffc), no lte etc..

Yeah, dude. Shatter is right. You can't compare "entry-level" phones to flagships & mid-rangers. If they were all lumped together in the same category, all "entry-level" phones would deserve ratings in the 1-3 range.

I have to disagree with parts of this review. I own this phone and have had none of the lag/performance issues that the reviewer did, nor was my call quality poor at all. I asked people I called, and they all unanimously said that my call quality was great, better than my older phone for sure.
Sure, it may not have the out there and flashy design that other Windows Phones have, but that's not Samsung's modus operandi. They don't make flashy phones. They, as the reviewer mentioned, make phones with more of a standard, business-like look to them. I feel like too many points were docked on this phone for the physical aesthetics alone.
Spec-wise, it's extremely close to any of the Lumia 92X devices, and performs just as well.
I don't know why they recommend the HTC over this for Sprint customers - the screen on the HTC compared to this is lower res, and has half of the amount of internal storage.

This device has a removable battery and a micro SD slot, both major wins for any Windows Phones. No Nokia Lumia has those features.

From my week+ using the phone, I'd honestly give it an 8... nothing that will blow your socks off, but certainly not bad in any respect. It's the best Windows Phone device you can get on Sprint. This 6.5 is certainly too low.

I totally agree! I give the Samsung Ativ S Neo an 8. This is a big upgrade from the HTC Arrive. I don't really care about the beats audio but I do like the HD LCD Display on the 4.8" screen and 16 Gigs of internal memory. I laughed at the part about the lag on the phone because I haven't had any problems or lag on my phone. That's not to say that there isn't any lag on any phone. They all will eventually lag or have a glitch here and there but Windows Phone is known for their smooth as butter OS. The call quality has been great on both ends as well. Overall, this phone is well appreciated on Sprint. Sprint has always been late when it comes to Windows Phone. I don't really see any Android, Apple, or Windows Phone users using Scout. Nokia's "HERE DRIVE" GPS Navigations is Superior to Scout. You can even download the maps to navigate without cellular data. The 6.5 score is a little bit low for this device. In my opinion, it deserves an 8. I believe the coverage in phonearena's area was terrible and the device was defected or a dev device.

18.theo14461 (unregistered)

I've owned almost all the top shelf Windows Phones. Focus, Focus S, Nokia 920, HTC 8X. I currently have been using this ATIV NEO S since launch date on Sprint, and it is NO worse than any other WP8 device out there!! NO performance issues, NO call quality issues!! I rate this device at least an 8.

Got this phone 2 weeks ago. I had WP 7.X and was hooked. I am average user and needed a balance of camera, storage, size, battery, speed, aesthetics. WP 8.1 is doing just fine for APP availability. You could spend all day comparing this APP that APP. How many do you really need?

Outlook & skydrive are seemless. Live tiles work great.

We have Iphone and Android in the house with the kids but they really picked their phones because the girls had Iphones and the guys had Android. Not saying that they are wrong, but they wouldn't even look at the WP. Too bad. its a great option in this really nice phone. 8/10.

BUYER BEWARE!!! This phone looks nice but there are a few flaws that make this phone just a piece of crap.

1. The voicemail message indication system is anything but a message indication and I sometimes find that I have voicemail messages days old that I never even knew were left.

2. Unlike all previous phones I've had, voicemail messages are automatically deleted after about 10 days after retrieving whether you like it or not.

3. Initially in the first three months of having the phone, it charged beautifully in about 3 hours (top to bottom fully charged i.e. 0-100%). Now after just just 3 months my phone takes more time to charge than an elephant in labor after and purchasing a new battery for no reason other than that being the advice of the service provider I have the same probelm charging my phone.

What used to take 3 hours now takes days to fully or even 50% charge, I put my phone to charge from a 35% battery life on Sunday, February 9th, 2014 @ 11:15AM and it is now Tuesday, February 11th, 2014 9:18PM and the phone is still not charged fully, in fact, it is now only at 91%. Now mind you I left the phone at home all thesse days and used my son's phone through this ordeal. What CRAP is this?

4. Forget about the MS office applications I have yet to get them to actually work properly and this feature was my reason for buying this phone.

I WILL NEVER AGAIN TRUST ANOTHER WINDOWS PHONE AND WILL NEVER AGAIN WASTE MY MONEY ON A WINDOWS PHONE!!

If you want to be stress out waiting for your phone to charge, BUY THIS PHONE

Way off on this review! The poor call quality & bit of lag had to be attributed to Sprint! I snagged the Neo from Ebay in mint condition just under 140.00 & am running it on At&t's Cricket Wireless network just fine. Plus the update to the 8.1 preview I just did to it. (which was surprisingly easy) makes it so much better. WP 8.1 really is great! Anyway this is a great device. HTC I have read at least with the 8X doesn't use the flash to help focus shots on the camera either. Which can result in more blur. This Samsung with the right tweaks in the settings too takes better photos then said here. Laggier Androids have gotten better scorres then this. That's one thing I don't like about PA is your scores really are not accurate sometimes..

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